Who Is The Real Bernard Bergemar? Pornhub's Owner Has No Traces Online

A recent investigation may have uncovered the identity of the owner of MindGeek, a Montreal-based company that runs some of the most popular porn sites, including Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube.

MindGeek has been dominating the pornography industry in Europe and America. Information about the company and its owner has remained mostly unknown until a Financial Times investigation uncovered the name Bernard Bergemar.

Bergemar had only been known in a “small circle” of MindGeek executives, advisers and other company members, until the report, which was published Thursday. The mysterious businessman joined MindGeek in 2013, and now owns shares in most of the company’s subsidiaries, making him its biggest beneficiary.

However, there is hardly any trace of Bergemar online. Financial Times noted that before publishing their story, a Google search of Bergemar showed only three results. These were related to a court case 10 years ago in which he gave evidence as RedTube’s director.

"The opaqueness surrounding the company's financing also covers management. The names of many of the company's senior executives who feature in corporate filings do not appear in internet searches, leaving little or no trace of who they are,” Financial Times’ Patricia Nilsson wrote.

The revealing FT report comes after Pornhub purged more than 10 million unverified videos from its website after the site was accused of hosting videos showing child abuse and non-consensual sex.

Pornhub allegedly hosted rape videos and monetized revenge pornography, spycam videos, and racist and misogynist content. The site also had more than 100,000 videos that presented sexual content involving minors, according to a New York Times op-ed.

The changes, which were announced in a blog post on Monday, brought the website’s videos from 13.5 million to under 3 million. Pornhub will now impose “the most comprehensive safeguards,” including requiring content creators to upload a photo of themselves with their username to verify their identity.

“At Pornhub, the safety of our community is our top priority. Last week, we enacted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history. As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program,” the blog post read.